The Word of Notch offers a poll, as Mojang wants to be sure Minecraft players are okay with them collecting data before they attempt to learn more about how their game is played:

Right now, the only way we can figure out roughly what people are doing with the game is to track logins. Once you’re logged in, we have no idea what happens.

I was thinking it would be awesomely cool to add some kind of player tracking to the game. This would work by having the game connect to minecraft.net and send some anonymous and non-private data about the game, such as current game mode (single player, multiplayer), operating system (windows? mac?), how long you’ve been playing for (so we know how long a game session is), and whether or not you’re playing the downloaded game, or the applet on the webpage. It would probably connect every ten minutes or so so we can get some semi-realtime data. We’d share the data with the community, as usual.

Naturally, the data sent will be fully anonymous, so it wouldn’t contain any session information or your user name, and it wouldn’t send any sensitive information that you might not want to share.

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 13:50:I don't understand how game stats tell you what's fun about a game. All it tells you is what players end up doing the most. If you have a bad game design that makes players grind then all you'll see is grinding.

It doesn't mean players like it...

I agree, but consider how myopic your statement really is...

If YOU know that grinding is crap, but required, don't you think developers know this too, and will 'weight' that information differently than the optional crap you can do?

Let's pretend the stats say you spend 60% going back and forth two spots in Final Fantasy, to level up... but then spend 30% of your time doing some optional game/event/whatever...

What does that tell me? Absolutely nothing, because you're one person and stats require a crap ton to be even remotely useful...

And then when we have a crap ton (a lot of people have mine craft, and likely a lot of people still play it)... With that much data, it's great, because you can get about 30 different results/opinions from 30 different experts ; )

MineCraft wasn't finished but it was playable. Was the original release really lacking in anything?

I don't think so. I enjoy this model, as I am not a very big MineCraft fan but I can play for a few days, grow bored/frustrated (typically the latter - finding a huge diamond mine, getting lost on the way out then getting killed and losing two hours worth of mining kills the game for me), and then coming back 6 months later to a somewhat different experience is nice.

Beamer wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 14:34:Where could Notch possibly sell this crap?

He found a way to make millions off of an unreleased product. He'll find a way to make millions off "anonymous" game usage data.

Alternative response:

By kicking it up a notch. Bam!

Why do so many people dwell on the charging to play unreleased product for? There was never a gun to peoples head telling them to buy it, you could wait for retail if you wanted. It was even at a lower price! I'm pretty sure that beta copy of Skyrim that was released as retail wasn't a lower price before the patches.

How many times do gamers say "I would pay to play that game right now"? knowing it's not finished.

He wasn't passing it off as a finished game either and you still received all the benefits of the retail version when it came out at no charge.

Now maybe you were just mentioning it but so many people get up in arms about selling a beta and I just don't get why people are angry about what other people spend their money on.

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 13:50:I don't understand how game stats tell you what's fun about a game. All it tells you is what players end up doing the most. If you have a bad game design that makes players grind then all you'll see is grinding.

It doesn't mean players like it...

Anyway, these things are okay if they're opt-in. Otherwise I think they're creepy.

At the very simplest level, if 99% of your players are playing multiplayer Minecraft for 99% of their time, it strongly suggests that's where your focus should be. If most players have DX9 video cards it doesn't make a lot of sense to support DX11. Etc.

More data is alwasy better. It's what conclussions you make from that data that can be dangerous.

Silicon Avatar wrote on Jan 25, 2012, 13:50:I don't understand how game stats tell you what's fun about a game. All it tells you is what players end up doing the most. If you have a bad game design that makes players grind then all you'll see is grinding.

It doesn't mean players like it...

Anyway, these things are okay if they're opt-in. Otherwise I think they're creepy.

But if you see grinding in a place you don't want grinding you know you messed something up.If you see people dying repeatedly in one place, or taking too long for one puzzle, or using a piece of physics in a way you didn't intend, you can investigate and figure out why it's happening.

I don't understand how game stats tell you what's fun about a game. All it tells you is what players end up doing the most. If you have a bad game design that makes players grind then all you'll see is grinding.

It doesn't mean players like it...

Anyway, these things are okay if they're opt-in. Otherwise I think they're creepy.